Content is the lifeblood of social media. That’s what makes it turn, makes it dynamic. We all know the feeling when we arrive at a blog site, or a Facebook page and see that there is nothing new. Even if we are a keen on the brand, it’s an immediate turn off.

Conversely, we all know what it’s like when we decide to follow a brand and are bombarded by too much of their info that doesn’t add value.

Or it’s a sad combination of both. A flurry of useless activity followed by…. nothing.

How to strike the balance?

There are two points that are critical to having success with your content:

1. Observe what kind of content is consumed in your industry. Use available tools like Social Mention. You’ll soon learn what your customers want to see.

2. Have a roll out plan and strategy for your social media content. Don’t just throw up a page or open a Twitter account and then stress every day about what you’re going to put up.

You will find that you have a lot of content that could be valuable. Do you have training videos? What about articles you may have written for trade publications in the past? Are there incentive programmes that can be put out for your customers? All of these and much more is content that you can put out on various social media channels. Here are some ideas:

Put up videos on Youtube, whether these are videos of campaigns you’ve run or training videos. Use Facebook and Twitter to let your follows know they are there.

Dig out your old press releases and turn these into longer articles on your blog site. Obviously only such that are still relevant

Photographs of your team in action or from past events or current events. Get these up on your Facebook page or Flickr account. Again promote these through Twitter, Facebook and other channels.

Get your customers involved – if you’re planning a new product or a launch or something similar, run a competition that will elicit their ideas for the new name, or where you should have your launch. Nothing gets consumer participation like an incentive!

And, of course, produce fresh content relevant to your industry – plan what you can do to generate this content.

These are just some ideas – once you’ve observed your industry you’ll come up with great ideas. Work out what you will do for content over the coming months. In this way you won’t find yourself frantically sitting in your office wandering what you can get out there.